"The Cajuns have always squeezed the passion fish, some swallow the passion fish, thinking hard of the one they want to be liked off."
The successful soap star May-Alice Culhane is after a taxi accident a paraplegic, bound to her wheelchair. She returns to her childhood home in Louisiana. To cope with the sudden chock of the totally new situation (like this starts the movie, May-Alice not understanding where she is and what happened. Finally at home in her childhoods home she starts drinking and watching television as the only thing to do. For the ever changing help she is the unbearable 'bitch on wheels'. Until Chantelle enters the scene. We know all about the bitter, white mistress. What she was, what happened to her and how it is now for her. But Chantelle? Parts and bits of the black recovering cocaine addicts background emerges slowly in bits and pieces. When Lucas shows up. When her father with her daughter pays a visit. Her father is the legal guardian for her daughter: "as long I think it is necessary" he tells Chantelle, his daughter. The white mistress and her black servant seem to be far apart: white and black. Two different worlds. But not: they sit in the same boat (shown metaphoric when the movie ends. Chantelle: "We are stuck with each other" and answered by May-Alice: "For the time being." May-Alice is visited twice by her former work, hardly hiding their pity for May-Alice and her black servant. When nothing is left to hide behind the white bitterness and the black stubbornness the afford to pretend is with no meaning. The possibility emerges: not to recognize but to see the other. Each other. Both in need of help. Helping each other. With no-way-out-option. Instead pity: respect. They are assisted by Rennie, the childhood crush, the Cajun handyman (Chantelle mouthes silent to her: "He likes you." And Sugar LeDoux, the local cowboy with children around every corner. He seduces Chantelle with smiling charm and dances with her daughter at the local festivity. Watched by the critical eyes of Chantelles father. Does the cowboy want Chantelles heart he must behave. The womens forced-up respect transforms to friendship. Behind their private disaster as crippled successful soap star and the recovering cocaine addict eds last chance for a job. This job. Both on their way to accept again life. Mirroring each others needs. Both crippled: a white body and a black soul.
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